Cellular-related quality of service (“QoS”) issues are a significant source of frustration for service providers as well as their customers. Common QoS issues include bandwidth limitations, jitter, delay and latency, packet loss, and interference. QoS issues may result in a number of problems for customers, potentially causing customers to change service providers. In one example, a customer may experience a “dropped call,” in which a phone call unexpectedly ends. In another example, a customer may experience a slow data transfer rate that is not suitable for transferring high-bandwidth content, such as video and music. QoS problems may result in unacceptable quality of service, causing customer dissatisfaction ranging from annoyance to anger. QoS problems may result in unacceptable quality of service, causing customer dissatisfaction ranging from annoyance to anger.
Many techniques are well-known for improving QoS in wireline networks. A number of these techniques rely on the static nature of wireline networks. That is, the wireline link conditions typically do not change during ordinary usage. In contrast, cellular networks often experience problems that are not experienced on wireline networks. In one example, unlike wireline networks, cellular networks may enable a user to move across different cells in the cellular network with few, if any, limitations. While the mobility is a benefit to the user, the service provider is left with the challenge of addressing dynamic QoS issues of the mobile user. In another example, even if the mobile user stays at one location, cellular networks often experience significant and rapid changes in the radio frequency (“RF”) link conditions, which can effectively terminate communications (e.g., a dropped call) or cause other problems. As such, rigid QoS techniques that may be effective on wireline networks tend to be less effective on cellular networks, in part because the operation of rigid QoS mechanisms is generally not adaptive.